The top reported proficiency rate is 31% in English language arts. The lowest is 12% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Andes Central School District 11-1
Andes Central School District 11-1 is a small, rural South Dakota district serving students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade across four schools: an elementary, a middle school, a high school, and Lakeview Colony Elementary, which likely serves a Hutterite colony community given its name. The district's enrollment is modest, with each grade cohort numbering in the low to mid-twenties, and class sizes that narrow considerably by high school. This is a place where students will know nearly every classmate, and teachers will know nearly every family.
The student body is predominantly American Indian or Alaska Native, with a substantial portion identifying as two or more races and a smaller white enrollment. A small number of Hispanic students round out the population. This demographic profile suggests the district sits near or within one of South Dakota's tribal lands, and families considering the district should understand that cultural identity and community ties likely play a central role in school life. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not available, nor were IEP or English Learner counts, so a parent looking for information on economic disadvantage or special-education and language services would need to ask the district directly.
On state assessments, the district's results paint a mixed picture. In English language arts, roughly three in ten tested students across grades three through eight reached proficiency, and in math the rate was somewhat lower. Science proficiency was notably weaker, with only a small fraction of tested students meeting the bar. Participation was strong across all three subjects, with nearly all eligible students tested, so these results reflect the full cohort rather than a skewed subset. No multi-year trend data was available, which means a parent cannot tell from the provided data whether performance is improving, declining, or holding steady. A family wanting to understand whether these numbers are part of a pattern would want to ask the district for several years of results.
No graduation rate, college-readiness, or career-technical-education data was provided, so the narrative for the high school years is incomplete from this source set. Given the small high school enrollment, a parent should ask directly about course offerings, dual-credit opportunities, and post-graduation pathways, since those details are not visible here. The district's elementary and middle school results are what the state data captures, and the high school picture would come from conversations with administrators.
The district brief turned up little in the way of recent parent-relevant changes. A search for referendums, curriculum updates, property-tax shifts, or other structural changes found nothing of lasting impact, which suggests the district has been operating in a relatively stable mode. For a family that values continuity and a settled school environment, that absence of churn may itself be useful information.
No locale brief, community context, housing data, or neighbor comparison was available for this district. This means a parent cannot use this source set to compare Andes Central against neighboring districts or to understand the local housing market, commute patterns, or broader economic conditions. Those questions would need to come from other sources.
What a parent can take from the available data is this: Andes Central is a small, rural, predominantly Native American district with close-knit cohorts, near-universal test participation, and academic results that sit below the midpoint in both math and ELA, with science a particular soft spot. The strengths are intimacy and continuity. The questions to bring to the district are about high school programming, special-education and language services, and whether the state test results reflect a stable situation or one the district is actively working to change.
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